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About the Artist: Biography

Xavier Cortada

"Xavier Cortada created a series of extensive installations on his Antarctic visit, focusing on the crucial element of time. The Florida native cast an ice replica of a Mangrove seedling that is very slowly making its way over 150,000 years to the coastline. In contrast, he marked the mere 50-year history of human presence at the South Pole with chronological flags stretching across the frozen land."

Xavier
Cortada created art installations in the Earth's poles to generate
awareness about global climate change: In 2007, an an NSF Antarctic Artist and Writer's Program Fellow, the artist used the moving ice
sheet beneath theSouth Poleas
an instrument to mark time; the art piece will be completed in 150,000 years.In 2008, he planted a green flag at the North Poleto reclaim
it for nature and launch a reforestation eco-art effort.

Cortada often collaborates with scientists in his art-making:

At CERN, Cortada worked with a physicist to develop a site-specific art installation capturing the five search strategies which the CMS experiment has used to discover a new Higgs-like particle. The five giant banners hang at the location (100m below the ground) where the particle was discovered.

Cortada is currently working with scientists at Hubbard Brook LTER on an water cycle visualization projectdriven by real-time data collected at a watershed in New Hamphire's White Mountains.

The Miami artist has worked with groups globally to produce numerous collaborative art projects, including peace murals in Cyprus and Northern Ireland, child welfare murals in Bolivia and Panama, AIDS murals in Switzerland and South Africa, and eco-art projects in Taiwan, Hawaii, Hollandand Latvia.

Cortada
has also been commissioned to create art for the White House, the World Bank, the Florida Supreme
Court,
the Florida Governor's Mansion, Florida Botanical Gardens, Miami City Hall, Miami-Dade County
Hall, the Miami
Art Museum,
the Miami Science Museum, Museum of Florida History, and the Frost Art Museum.

Corporations
such as General Mills, Nike, Heineken and Hershey's have commissioned his
art. Publishers like McDougal and Random House have featured it in
school textbooks and publications. His work has also been featured in National Geographic TV and the Discovery Channel.

Cortada, who was born in Albany, New York and
grew up in Miami, holds degrees from the University of Miami College of Arts and
Sciences, Graduate School of Business and School of Law.

Cortada serves as Artist-in-Residence at Florida International University's (FIU) College of Architecture + The Arts (CARTA).